Friday night, Brad Pitt’s documentary “The House I Live In” premiered in a Los Angeles theater. As he introduced the documentary, Brad Pitt confessed about his past as a drug user, depression and said the US “war on drugs” is a failure.
Brad Pitt is a busy man. He just became the first male spokesperson for Chanel No. 5 and premiered his documentary on the US “war on drugs” last week. Friday night, “The House I Live In” opened in wide release in the US and Brad Pitt was there to introduce his documentary on drugs. The actor talked about his own past using drugs and how he tried to deal with depression by smoking pot.
“I’m Brad Pitt and I’m a drug addict” the actor began his introductory speech. “My drug days have long since passed, but I could probably land in any American city and within 24 hours find whatever you want” Brad Pitt added. “But we still support this charade called the drug war. We spent a trillion dollars over 40 years and a lot of people have lost their lives over it” the documentary’s producer started.
Brad Pitt produced “The House I Live In” explaining current day policies on drug use are just bad. “It’s such a bad strategy. It makes no sense. It perpetuates itself. You make a bust, you drive up profit, which makes more people want to get into it” Brad Pitt told Reuters. “To me, there’s no question; we have to rethink this policy and we have to rethink it now” the actor added.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Brad Pitt confessed he feels that the US war on drugs “is possibly a barrier to keep the impoverished down. To keep them shackled”. “It’s staggering to me what is being perpetrated in this name of a war on … immorality. It’s criminal in itself. And we’ve got to look at that. We have to change that” he added.
“The House I Live In” received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is depicting the US war on drugs as a failure, a “charade” that needs an immediate revamp. According to the documentary, the war on drugs has taken more than $1 trillion since 1971 and has had 45 million people put in jail.
How can any responsible parent not desire a saner drug policy, and one that’s based on facts rather than reefer madness? Prohibition guarantees that many illegal drugs are far easier for our children to procure than even alcohol or nicotine. That’s because, even though these are both very dangerous and addictive drugs, they are at least sold in properly controlled and regulated environments.
Under our present regime, certain plants/concoctions/drugs are sold only by criminals and terrorists; the huge black-market profits are used to threaten innocent civilians, bribe law enforcement officials, and buy support from unconscionable politicians; the availability and usage rates tend to go up, not down, and our prisons have become filled to capacity with easily replaced vendors and smugglers —this list of dangerous and negative consequences is actually endless. To continue prohibition is ludicrous, and those of us who can’t see that by now, must be either severely and mentally challenged or using something far stronger than any of us have even heard of.
Why on earth should we be willing to whack ourselves with ever-bigger and more-repressive prohibition hammers, while drug use and availability keep going up, not down, and while we all plunge deeper into Loserville?
Prohibition is the most destructive, dysfunctional, dishonest and racist social policy since Slavery. Prohibition is a holocaust in slow motion. We MUST end it NOW!